How Marketing Automation Helps You Find Better Remodeler Clients

April 28, 2017 Michael Conway

Marketing Automation For Construction Firms

Find Better Home Remodel Clients, Close Sales Faster and Save Time and Money!

Marketing automation allows architects, interior designers, landscape, and design-build firms to streamline lead generation, customer lifecycle marketing, and measure marketing ROI. While large companies have long used the technology, small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) make up the largest growing segment of marketing automation users. A wide range of service industries are adopting the software for its appealing engagement-oriented approach to establishing and maintaining customer relationships throughout the customer lifecycle.

Automation is the Future of Online Marketing For Residential Home Improvement Firms

Experts predict that it won’t be long before any business that conducts online sales will be using some form of the technology. If you’re not familiar with marketing automation, it’s worth considering how it can change the way you email your prospects, leads, and customers.

Before we get into what marketing automation is, let’s be clear on what it is not:

Just another name for email marketing. Marketing automation does much more and does it across multiple marketing channels.
A form of high-tech spam that doesn’t target specific customers.
An effortless solution that works without a comprehensive marketing strategy.

The days of non-targeted email marketing are coming to an end, and segmentation and personalized emails are taking their place.

What is Marketing Automation

From sending just a few highly-targeted emails to comprehensive automation, there are six key elements to marketing automation:

Email Capture, also known as lead capture, uses opt-in forms to “capture” leads. The forms can be as simple as a single field for an email address to multiple fields that include the lead’s name, company, the size of a company, phone number, address, etc.
Lead Nurturing sends a personalized sequence of emails to educate and build trust with potential customers. They’re often based on a person’s interactions with your website.
List Management lets you segment subscribers and sends them offers targeted to who they are and what behavior they exhibit on your site.
Website Analytics help you understand what a person is doing on your website so you can determine how likely they are to buy.
Lead Scoring provides a score indicating how ready a person is to make a purchase.
CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, involves using collected data to follow up on and close a sale.

Additional available features, including things like landing pages, depend on which marketing automation software you choose.

The Core Purpose of Marketing Automation

As a home improvement professional, marketing automation lets you engage and nurture leads over a period without investing a lot of personal time that you could otherwise be spending servicing customers you already have. Automation can also have an enormous impact on your conversion rate, as being able to personalize solutions for a potential customer is far superior to sending the same static email to your entire mailing list. Here are a few examples of how it could work for you:

A lead opens your email and clicks on a link about kitchen interior design. They are tagged with “kitchen interior design” and are sent targeted for emails about that topic.
A lead fills out a website form indicating they are thinking of building a custom home. They are tagged with “design-build custom home” and put into a different email sequence than someone who clicks on a link about "basement remodeling".
A trial user downloads a landscape design planning guide, and you automatically send an email about the best plants and landscaping hardscapes for their zone and neighborhood.
A lead views your architectural portfolio but doesn’t fill out a form asking for more info. You follow-up within a few hours offering a giveaway, such as an guide like "Top Ten Questions You Should Ask an Architect before Signing a Contract", with a link to schedule an onsite consultation.

The options are limitless, and there’s simply no comparison regarding relevance, engagement, and final results.

How Automation Beats Traditional Email Marketing

Tailoring emails to someone’s behavior is far more effective than sending an email blast to thousands of people, many of whom may not be interested in everything you may have to say or be offering. Static email newsletters or email software programs that don’t accommodate personalization prohibit you from learning all you can about prospects, and that means fewer sales. Another sign it’s time to switch to automation? When you find yourself spending too much time manually updating email or segmentation lists.

The Drip Marketing Solution

You have a few options for automating your marketing process. If you need to manage a high-touch sales process, you’re better off using one of the big software solutions like Infusionsoft, Hubspot, Marketo, or Pardot, which all come with initial investments, training, and monthly costs that can quickly exceed $1000 per month. For smaller businesses, a marketing automation tool like Drip offers most of the benefits of the big guys at a fraction of the cost.

While Drip does not have advanced CRM, it does an excellent job of capturing and nurturing leads, managing lists for targeted campaigns, handling simple web analytics, tracking subscriber behavior, and assigning lead scores. It also integrates with a host of payment and landing page providers like PayPal and Stripe, and requires little to no training to manage. It’s less expensive than other solutions that may have been keeping you from trying automation, and it does not require up-front fees and monthly or yearly contracts.

The Lightweight Solution

Most small businesses don’t need all the bells and whistles that come with fully-loaded automation software. Drip is lightweight regarding complication, but rich in features that most small and medium sized businesses need to run automated marketing campaigns. It’s the ideal solution for businesses who want a simpler, less expensive tool that lets them handle email communications and customer management throughout their entire lifecycle: from visitor to prospect to lead and to customer.

You don’t have to spend a bundle to add marketing automaton to your website. MailChimp is an easy to use, inexpensive way to start an automated marketing process that will save you time and attract better leads. Click here to learn more about email marketing and marketing automation pricing.

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